The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 1) — Page ccclxiii
GENERAL INTRODUCTION but none of them had become the recipient of divine revelation since their mental faculties were not yet fully developed. When the development of human intellect arrived at the stage where man became capable of forming a society and living in accordance with an organized system, God sent His revelation to Adam, who possessed the most highly developed intellect in his own age, and he thus became the first Prophet. He was not the first man but the first Prophet, and the revelation received by him comprised a few clear and simple social laws and a simple explanation of some of the divine attributes. At another place the Quran says: "And We did create you and then We gave you shape and then said We to the angels, 'submit to Adam' " (7:12). The verse means that God created man and then gave shape to his faculties and then commanded the angels to bow down to Adam. This verse also clearly shows that man had been in existence prior to the time of Adam. The development of man's intellectual faculties indicates that before the appearance of Adam man had already passed through several stages of evolution. The verse indicates that after man was created his faculties developed from stage to stage and assumed different shapes and he began to be distinguished from the other animal creation around him and when his intellect was developed to a certain degree, Adam was created and God sent His revelation to him. The Object of Man's Creation The Quran teaches that man has been created to serve as a manifestation of God's attributes and to illustrate them in his life. It says, "And I have created the jinn and men only that they may serve Me and receive the impress of My attributes" (51:57). (As has already been explained the word jinn does not mean some species of invisible creation but is intended to signify certain classes of people). At another place the Quran says, "He it is Who made you vicegerents in the earth. So he who disbelieves, will himself suffer the consequences of his disbelief" (35:40). This means that if a man voluntarily abdicates the position that God has assigned to him, he does not thereby in any manner injure God but merely dislodges himself from a position of honour and will suffer the consequences himself. These verses show that man has been created to illustrate in his own life the attributes of God and that he is the vicegerent of God upon earth. He is, thus, the central point of the material universe. Since Prophets are raised for the reform of mankind and to remind them of the object of their life and to guide them rightly towards its achievement, they become in their spheres the centres for mankind. In other words, man is the sun round which the material universe revolves and each of cccxxxvii